Did you think that Rock Paper Scissors was just a dinky meaningless game? Think again!

The sign

The game is a sign of how fast the computer brain can collect and process data. We’ve all seen someone who seemingly couldn’t be beat at Rock Paper Scissors. It seemed like they could see what you were deciding, and could immediately choose the winning move. Now there is a computer that can do it with 100% accuracy.

Robots took another step toward total domination of the human race this week with the invention of a new ‘bot that can beat anyone at Rock, Paper, Scissors, 100 percent of the time.
Developed by researchers at the University of Tokyo’s Ishikawa Oku Laboratory, the soulless contraption works by detecting hand movements with a “high-speed vision” camera.

Detection and Move Selection

The hand of the robot uses the information picked up by the camera to ensure victory. There is no way to trick it, the robot really does just work almost instantaneously.

“Recognition of human hand can be performed at 1 millisecond with a high-speed vision, and the position and the shape of the human hand are recognized,”

1 millisecond.

Cooperation control

The goal of the project is to show how quickly computers can recognize human interaction and respond.

“This technology is one example that show a possibility of cooperation control within a few milliseconds,” write the researchers. “And this technology can be applied to motion support of human beings and cooperation work between human beings and robots etc. without time delay.”

We’ll see if it becomes more than a fun little game.

Joshua Howland

Joshua is a mobile application developer, entrepreneur, and technology enthusiast. His favorite posts are comparing companies and products. He’s pretty good at predicting what Apple has up its sleeves too. He loves sports and business and talks about them (along with tech) on Twitter (@jkhowland).